


breaking point

by Bumblewyn



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (I'm calling it minor but spoiler alert it's Gabriel), Adrien Agreste Needs a Hug, Adrien pretty much loses his marbles in this, Angst, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Bittersweet Ending, Dark, Emotional Hurt, Evil Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Gen, Hawkmoth Defeat, Heavy Angst, Hurt Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Identity Reveal, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug is Too Good For This World, Mild Blood, Minor Character Death, Protect Adrien Agreste, Reveal, SOMEONE GIVE MY BOY ADRIEN A HUG HE IS NOT COPING WELL, Sad, it's not his fault; poor boy has been through a LOT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 16:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20763473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblewyn/pseuds/Bumblewyn
Summary: It wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Not one bit of it.They were supposed to ambush Hawkmoth, take away his miraculous, and turn whoever had been beneath the mask over to the police.They were never supposed tokill his father.





	breaking point

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, not sorry.

# 1\. fractured

It wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Not one bit of it.

They were supposed to ambush Hawkmoth, take away his miraculous, and turn whoever had been beneath the mask over to the police.

They were never supposed to _ kill his father. _

With shaking hands, Adrien gripped the butterfly miraculous. His knuckles were white, a gruesome contrast with the fresh blood smeared on his hands.

It felt like something inside of him was burning a hole in his chest as he looked over his father’s motionless form, impaled on a large section of the stained glass that had once made up the window in Hawkmoths evil lair. His _ father’s _ evil lair. Because his father had been Hawkmoth.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to go from one breath to the next. He didn’t know _ anything _ anymore.

“Cha– Adrien–” Ladybugs voice trembled as she called out to him. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

His vision blurred. 

His grip on the butterfly brooch tightened.

Adrien squeezed his eyes shut, and something wet rolled down his cheeks. Then, he whipped his head around to glare at Plagg, who was hovering just beside his right shoulder. The kwami seemed speechless, for once. 

“Did you know?” Adrien demanded through grit teeth. There was no response. Just more of the deafening silence that had followed his father’s last breath. “Plagg!” he barked. Breath catching in his throat, he repeated, "Did. You. Know."

“No,” Plagg finally responded, his voice uncharacteristically soft. 

“Nobody knew,” Ladybug added, her pity for him clear in her voice. “This… wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“No,” Adrien agreed as he rose to his feet. He turned to her, his gaze meeting hers for the first time since they’d seen Hawkmoth fall. “It wasn’t.”

He didn’t know what Ladybug saw in his eyes, but whatever it was made her take a step back. “Adrien—”

“I’m done listening to you,” he interrupted her. A strange sense of serenity came over him as he realised what he needed to do. 

He held out his hand, palm up. “Give me your earrings.”

“Wh–what?” Ladybug stammered, her blue eyes wide with something akin to fear.

“It’s just like you said,” he explained calmly, as if speaking to a child. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. So we need to undo it. _ All _ of it.

“The only reason Hawkmoth ever existed is because of my mother. If we bring them both back, none of this would have ever happened. No akumas. No pain. No suffering.” He shot her a cold look. "No death.”

She had been the one to smash the window. The one who had given his father the final shove. She had screamed when the glass had pierced through Hawkmoths chest, but she hadn’t shown remorse, instead calling for Chat Noir to grab the miraculous while Hawkmoth was down. 

Unintentional or not, there was only one way she could ever make this right. 

“You heard him,” Adrien continued mercilessly. “With the power of our miraculous combined, reality itself can be altered. So hand it over.”

Ladybug just stared at him for a moment, her arms slightly raised as if ready to defend. Then, she let them fall to her sides. “Tikki, spots off.”

Before him stood Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

# 2\. shattered

“Adrien, please don’t do this,” Marinette pleaded as her eyes filled with tears. “I know you’re hurting right now, but this isn’t the way.” She sobbed. “I’m your friend, please let me help you.”

Adrien’s eyes remained cold as ice, the green in them which she had once admired looking more like a sickly pale grey.

“I don’t want to have to fight you, Marinette,” he said. “But if I need to, I will.”

“If you abuse the power of the miraculouses like that, it will taint your soul forever!” Tikki chirped, her voice distressed and even higher-pitched than normal. “Wielding that kind of power is not something a human can ever recover from!”

“And how do you propose I recover from _ this?!” _Adrien snapped, gesturing around him, presumably speaking of the ruins they stood in, which Marinette guessed were a rather accurate metaphor for what his life had become.

“I hear therapy comes highly recommended,” Plagg chipped in, making Marinette wince. 

“Not the time, Plagg!” Tikki hissed under her breath. 

Plagg mimed zipping his mouth shut. 

“Last chance, Marinette,” Adrien spoke warningly, his eyes dark and clearly full of pain. “Give me your earrings. Allow me to fix this.”

Marinette shook her head, blinking away the tears in her eyes. It didn’t matter, they were resurfacing just as fast as gravity took them. There was an ache in her chest like she had never felt before.

Was it her heart that was breaking? She’d nearly thrown up when she saw who had been beneath Hawkmoths mask all along. Seeing Chat Noir drop his own disguise immediately after, revealing none other than Adrien Agreste… It had hurt. Though she knew nothing she had ever felt could compare to the hurt she saw in Adrien’s eyes right then.

“I can’t,” she whispered through her tears. “I can’t let you do that.”

“And yet you did _ this_.” Adrien slammed his fist against his chest, pinning the butterfly miraculous to his breast pocket. “Nooroo, Plagg, dark claws out!”

# 3\. broken

A sickening screech filled the ruins of what had once been Hawkmoths lair. Multifaceted lights danced across the ceiling. The young man’s feet rose slightly above the floor as a whirlwind of thunder enveloped him. With a flash of lightning, the young man was gone, replaced by a dark figure adorned with pointed ears and leather wings unfolding from his back. 

The young woman staggered back. Her eyes widened in disbelief and pain, but then narrowed with stubborn determination. “Tikki, spots on!” she cried, and in a flash of red light she, too, disappeared, only to be replaced by a superheroine clad in red.

Hawk Noir spread his arms and beat his wings, causing a cloud of black and green butterflies to come rushing from the shadows. The flying creatures crowded Ladybug, who had to crouch down on the floor behind the cover of her rapidly spinning yoyo to resist the onslaught.

“Adrien, please! This isn’t you!” Ladybug shouted over the cacophony of beating wings. “You don’t have to do this!”

“I do, if I want to fix what’s been done,” Hawk Noir growled back, diving down towards her with his claws drawn. 

He struck hard, but Ladybug was able to deflect his hit with her yoyo at the very last second, and leapt backwards out of his reach. 

“I will never give you my miraculous.”

“That’s why I’m taking it!” 

Ladybug dashed away and cast her yoyo up towards the roof. It caught on the ledge of the broken window, and she expertly launched herself up through the opening.

As she landed, she cast her yoyo up once again. “Lucky charm!”

A burst of light coloured the sky red, and then a second yoyo fell from the sky into her waiting hand. For once, she didn’t hesitate. She knew what to do.

Hawk Noir rose from the window, carried by his massive leather wings. When he saw her, he lunged for her again, recklessly swiping his claws left and right in the hope that he would catch her one way or the other.

Instead, she caught him. Her yoyos danced through the air like gravity had no meaning, twisting around him and binding his arms and wings to his back. 

He growled at her, his teeth bared, even as he was forced to his knees before her. His eyes shimmered with the madness of having the power of two miraculous coursing through his veins.

“This isn’t you,” Ladybug repeated softly as she approached him. She crouched down and reached behind him, where she gently pried the black ring off his finger. 

Removing the ring broke his transformation and left him panting on his knees as all the power drained from him. He glared up at her, his eyes shimmering with angry tears. 

“I will never stop,” he vowed, shaking his head at her. “I can’t bear it.”

Her eyes were full of sorrow when she looked down at him. “I know.”

“Then let me fix it, please, Ladybug… Please, _ Marinette,_ let me fix it,” he begged.

With a sad smile on her face, she said, “I can’t let you do that. I care about you too much.”

With an air of finality, she slipped the ring on her own finger and closed her eyes. When she opened them, her irises had gone green and her pupils were nothing more than thin slits in the sunlight. 

She brought the second yoyo to her lips and whispered, “Please, help him. Please.” Then, she tossed the yoyo high up into the air with a cry of “Miraculous Ladybug!”

White light enveloped them, spreading further and further until the whole planet was alight with magic. 

Then, it was all gone.

# 4\. forgotten

“Adrien? Adrien, sweetheart, you need to wake up. You’re going to be late for school.”

Gentle fingers carded through his hair, and Adrien groaned sleepily, rolling over in his bed. 

“Come on honey. You don’t want to be late on your first day, do you?” 

“Mom?” Adrien blinked blearily into the light, squinting to make out a waterfall of golden hair cascading onto his pillow. 

He yawned and stretched. It felt like he had been sleeping for a million years, when he knew for a fact that he’d barely been able to fall asleep the night before, out of nervousness for his first day of public school.

“I had the weirdest dream,” he mumbled. His forehead wrinkled as he tried to remember. “Something about butterflies?”

His mother chuckled. “You’re just nervous for your first day, love.” She pressed a kiss onto his forehead and stood up from where she had been sitting on the edge of his bed. “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay.”

He sat up and smiled at her. Her encouraging words filled his chest with warmth. “Yes, I think I will be.”

“But please hurry up,” she said as she walked out of his room. “There’s breakfast waiting for you downstairs!”

“On my way!” he promised, and he leapt out of bed, ready to start his new life.

# 5\. lost

Everything hurt. Marinette ached down to the core of her bones. Her very _ soul _ seemed to be in pain, torn at the edges.

With a gasp, she awoke. “What?” she tried to say, but her voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper. Rasping, she sat up in her bed, wincing with every hacking cough that pierced through her chest.

She felt like she’d gone ten rounds with a freight train and lost. 

“Tikki?” she croaked. “Tikki, are you there?”

There was no response. 

She looked around for her phone, and found it plugged in next to her pillow. 

With shaking fingers, she searched for ‘Gabriel Agreste’.

Company. Wife. Child. Happily married for 15 years. Famous designer who changed the Paris fashion scene. Teenage son already a very successful model at the age of 14.

Clutching her phone to her chest, Marinette wept until no more tears would come. 

It had worked. She had performed one last miracle; the most important one of all.

The price didn’t matter. 

Everything was going to be okay.


End file.
